Thursday, 26 July 2012

A sunny week! (Yes, really!)

Aside from Learn Nothing Day on Tuesday, it's been business as usual round here this week, with one big difference - the sun has been shining and it's actually been... hot! To be honest it doesn't make a great deal of difference to Sprout and Squidge as they're just as happy jumping in puddles and making mud pies in the rain as they are shooting water pistols in the sun.

We've been getting a lot of courgettes and tomatoes in our veg boxes, so we decided to make some muffins with them (recipe here). Squidge is really loving cooking at the moment, and has been making something different with me almost every day for the past couple of weeks. He especially enjoyed lobbing the whole cherry tomatoes into the mix for the muffins!

He also took charge of making some krispie cakes, which didn't last the day :)

I saw the little idea on a blog last week (will update with blog name when I remember which one!) of giving the kids a simple torch to take apart and rebuild, so I got a couple of torches and they had so much fun doing it! They were so proud of themselves when they got them working, too.

And once they were working, Sprout made use of the trays I'd put them on, which had a pattern of holes in the base, to make light patterns on the walls and ceiling.

Meanwhile, Fly is settling in nicely, and seems to think Moppet is her puppy sister...

...and Squidge getting more and more confident with her to the point that he's regularly picking her up for a cuddle! (I couldn't even have imagined that a few weeks ago when he was terrified beyond belief of all dogs).

Once we'd got over the shock of the weather actually being summery, we picked up a couple of new garden toys, and I installed myself under a parasol with Moppet and watched them play in the sun with Gruff.

(Moppet watching from inside the tent)

We've been picking raspberries out there every day as well. Despite the complete, total, unquestionable demise of all our veg crops this year (I blame the crazy amounts of rain, not my lack of green fingers!), the fruit has still done really well, so it's going to be raspberry flan, Eton Mess, raspberry muffins, raspberry granita, and basically rather a lot of plain raspberries for pudding this summer!

Sprout has been busy on Minecraft, mainly working on a parkour custom map, but also occasionally calling me over to show me little sweet things like this heart that he's made for me :)

Gruff's been working really hard recently and wanted a weekend of reconnecting with the boys, so he took Sprout bouldering, and then took Squidge to the cinema to see Top Cat.

And while Squidge was out at the cinema Sprout and Moppet had lots of snuggle time too :)

Later in the week, this streak of colour was Sprout leaping round the assault course he'd set up...

...which was later replaced by this rolling balancing beam (a carpet tube that's been used for so many things that it's well worth the fact that we can't properly open the door behind which we store it!)

This week Squidge has also found a renewed liking for the workbooks that come in comics, so we've spent some time with our comic stash, counting, looking at letters and sticking in stickers.

Following a cooking session, he also had an idea for doing a painting that used sugar, which produced sparkly results...

Yesterday we headed to a quieter-than-usual home ed group, where the boys made a den under the trees, did water 'paintings' on the patio...

...and played lots of board games to get out of the sun.

And then just to add even more colour to the week, on the journey back Sprout got creative :)

As always at the moment, we had a hugely varied week facilitating all the boys' interests, and I can't think of a more enjoyable way to live :)